7. Your First Event

Contents

Before You Run Your First Event
Day Before
Morning Of
During the Event
End of the Event
After the Event

Before You Run Your First Event

This page is a checklist that ties together the rest of the Operators section. It assumes you already have a login and, if you’re using it, an installed and paired OBS plugin — if not, start with Getting Started.

Testing Your Pipeline Before Game Day

Operators can’t create a rehearsal event themselves — that’s a system-admin-only tool. Two things
you can do ahead of time:

• Ask your system admin whether a test event already exists on your Client and stream key, or ask
  them to create one directly on your Client and key — a test event runs synthetic matches through
  the real pipeline (recording, clipping, upload) so you can confirm everything works end-to-end
  before a real event. It shows up in your Client’s Events list with a yellow TEST badge and
  behaves like any other configured event; you can see it and adjust its configuration from Event
  Configuration, but only a system admin can create or delete it. A brand-new test event starts with
  no YouTube channel, restream key, or signage set, so configure those first the same as you would
  for a real event.
• Ask your system admin for the OBS Test Clock URL and add it as an OBS Browser Source. It
  needs no login and shows a running clock (optionally with color bars and test tones) so you can
  confirm your video and audio pipeline look right before you’re on the air. If your system admin
  changes its settings, use OBS’s “Refresh cache of current page” on that source to pick up the
  change.

If your event restreams to YouTube, also try a short unlisted test broadcast through the platform
before the event, and confirm on YouTube itself that it plays with both picture and sound.

Day Before

1. Confirm your event is configured (not just discovered) with the right stream key and — for FRC — Blue Alliance credentials, and check that its Stream window covers the hours you’ll stream. (The timezone is set by system admins; ask one if it’s wrong.) See Managing Events.
2. Confirm your OBS plugin is paired and that you can pick the right stream key and event in the dock, or that you have the manual server/stream-key values ready if you’re not using the plugin. See OBS Plugin Guide.
3. If your event restreams to YouTube, confirm the channel it broadcasts to is linked and not showing “Auth failed — re-link required” (see Troubleshooting).
4. If your event restreams to YouTube, open Broadcast days on the event’s Livestream tab and confirm a broadcast exists for each day of the event. Note each day’s watch link and check it’s the link that was announced. Don’t replace a broadcast later unless you must — replacing it gives it a different public link. See YouTube Broadcasts.
5. You can stream a pre-event test the day before: start streaming in OBS as normal, and the event shows Pre-event test instead of 🔴 LIVE. You can check the stream with ▶ Preview, but nothing is pushed to YouTube (Start Push is refused until the event’s start time). The event switches to 🔴 LIVE by itself at its start time. To test all the way to YouTube instead, create the optional setup-day test video on the Livestream tab: on the day before the event, Start Push and Go Live then send your test feed to an unlisted video, and you can confirm picture and sound on YouTube. That push stops at midnight, so click Start Push again on event day. See The Setup-Day Test Video.
6. If you’re using signage, you can turn it on from the day before the event. Confirm the signs you expect are assigned and not sitting in a Drifted or Error state. See Clips, Uploads and Signage.
7. Run through the test procedure above if you haven’t already this season.

Morning Of

1. Arrive with enough time to get your A/V setup running per your program’s guide (FTC A/V Setup Guide or FRC A/V Home) before matches start.
2. Open OBS. If you’re using the plugin, confirm it shows Paired! and pick today’s event from the dock. If not, double check your manual stream key/server settings are still correct.
3. Open the event’s control center in the web dashboard and confirm its status panel looks right — no unexpected health warnings yet.
4. In OBS, click Start Streaming. Wait until the dashboard’s Incoming Stream status turns Online (the OBS dock shows the same) before moving on — that’s the platform actually receiving your feed.
5. If your event restreams to YouTube, click Start Push and wait for the YT Restream row to read Ready for Live. Don’t click Go Live yet. Start Push is refused before the event’s start time (“Pushing opens at the event’s start time…”).
6. Click Go Live only when you’re actually ready for viewers to see the broadcast — for example, opening ceremonies or the first match. Until then the push runs privately. After Go Live the row reads Live to YouTube. Then open the public watch link on a phone and confirm it plays, with sound — a green status means YouTube is receiving the stream, not that viewers can watch it. See Running a Live Event for what each step does.

Green Doesn't Guarantee Playback

If YouTube shows the stream as healthy but the watch page won’t play, see
YouTube Shows Healthy but Won’t Play.

At the end of the day this runs in reverse — see End of the Event.

During the Event

1. Keep an eye on the status panel (or the OBS dock) for health warning banners, and act on them using Troubleshooting.
2. Let clipping and uploading happen automatically — there’s nothing to click per match.
3. If OBS drops, the YT Restream row reads Holding — standby slate on YouTube with a countdown, and YouTube keeps the broadcast open. Reconnect OBS and the push resumes by itself; don’t press Stop Push.
4. If your dashboard still shows the event as 🔴 LIVE after your stream has actually stopped, give it about 2 minutes to catch up — see When the Event Ends.

End of the Event

1. Wait until the last match’s clip shows up past Pending/Processing in the pipeline section (or the Clips page) — once it reads On EFS (or further, On S3), that match has actually been recorded and cut, so stopping now won’t cut it off.
2. If the event was broadcasting to YouTube, click Stop Broadcast. It confirms first: “Stop this broadcast? This is irreversible on YouTube — the broadcast cannot be resumed.” — this is a deliberate, one-way action.
3. Click Stop Push. It confirms first (“Stop Push?”; after Stop Broadcast the message is “Stop sending the stream to YouTube?”). Wait for the YT Restream row to pass Stopping push… and read Idle, with “Stopped by operator” under it.
4. Only now, stop streaming in OBS (Stop Streaming). Stopping OBS before the broadcast/push are stopped drops them uncleanly instead of ending them properly.
5. If signage was in use, return each sign to whatever it should show overnight, or use Disable Signage for the event — see Clips, Uploads and Signage.
6. Leave the dashboard open until uploads for the last few matches finish, or check them later — see After the Event.

After the Event

1. Spot-check the Clips page for missing or missed matches, and the Uploads page for anything stuck in Failed, Deferred, or Paused. See Clips, Uploads and Signage.
2. If you used signage, confirm signs you no longer need have been returned to a sensible display (or disable signage for the event from its control center).
3. If your event restreamed, confirm you actually completed End of the Event — stopped both the broadcast and the push.
4. Optionally, click Complete on the event’s row in the Events list (User or above) to mark it completed. If you don’t, it completes itself a while after its stream window ends (see When an Event Completes). A completed event refuses OBS publishes until a Client Admin reopens it.
5. If you replaced a broadcast (for example, one you used for testing), a Client Admin can remove the old one with Delete on YouTube — see Replaced Broadcasts and Delete on YouTube.
6. Note anything unusual for your Client Admin or system admin so it isn’t a surprise at the next event.